"I have a thorn in my foot," the native said. "I have to get it out."
Duncan pulled the knife from his belt and tossed it. Sipar caught it
deftly.
Looking straight at Duncan, with the flicker of a smile upon its lips,
the native cut its throat.
V
He should go back, he knew. Without the tracker, he didn't have a
chance. The odds were now with the Cytha--if, indeed, they had not
been with it from the very start.
Unkillable? Unkillable because it grew in intelligence to meet
emergencies? Unkillable because, pressed, it could fashion a bow and
arrow, however crude? Unkillable because it had a sense of tactics,
like rolling rocks at night upon its enemy? Unkillable because a
native tracker would cheerfully kill itself to protect the Cytha?
A sort of crisis-beast, perhaps? One able to develop intelligence and
abilities to meet each new situation and then lapsing back to the
level of non-intelligent contentment? That, thought Duncan, would be a
sensible way for anything to live. It would do away with the
inconvenience and the irritability and the discontentment of
intelligence when intelligence was unneeded. But the intelligence, and
the abilities which went with it, would be there, safely tucked away
where one could reach in and get them, like a necklace or a
gun--something to be used or to be put away as the case might be.
Duncan hunched forward and with a stick of wood pushed the fire
together. The flames blazed up anew and sent sparks flying up into the
whispering darkness of the trees. The night had cooled off a little,
but the humidity still hung on and a man felt uncomfortable--a little
frightened, too.
Duncan lifted his head and stared up into the fire-flecked darkness.
There were no stars because the heavy foliage shut them out. He missed
the stars. He'd feel better if he could look up and see them.
When morning came, he should go back. He should quit this hunt which
now had become impossible and even slightly foolish.
But he knew he wouldn't. Somewhere along the three-day trail, he had
become committed to a purpose and a challenge, and he knew that when
morning came, he would go on again. It was not hatred that drove him,
nor vengeance, nor even the trophy-urge--the hunter-lust that prodded
men to kill something strange or harder to kill or bigger than any man
had ever killed before. It was something more than that, some weird
entangling of the Cytha's meaning with his own.
He reached out and picked up the rifle and laid it in his lap. Its
barrel gleamed dully in the flickering campfire light and he rubbed
his hand along the stock as another man might stroke a woman's throat.
"Mister," said a voice.
* * * * *
It did not startle him, for the word was softly spoken and for a
moment he had forgotten that Sipar was dead--dead with a half-smile
fixed upon its face and with its throat laid wide open.
"Mister?"
Duncan stiffened.
Sipar was dead and there was no one else--and yet someone had spoken
to him, and there could be only one thing in all this wilderness that
might speak to him.
"Yes," he said.
He did not move. He simply sat there, with the rifle in his lap.
"You know who I am?"
"I suppose you are the Cytha."
"You have done well," the Cytha said. "You've made a splendid hunt.
There is no dishonor if you should decide to quit. Why don't you go
back? I promise you no harm."
It was over there, somewhere in front of him, somewhere in the brush
beyond the fire, almost straight across the fire from him, Duncan told
himself. If he could keep it talking, perhaps even lure it out--
"Why should I?" he asked. "The hunt is never done until one gets the
thing one is after."
"I can kill you," the Cytha told him. "But I do not want to kill. It
hurts to kill."
"That's right," said Duncan. "You are most perceptive."
For he had it pegged now. He knew exactly where it was. He could
afford a little mockery.
His thumb slid up the metal and nudged the fire control to automatic
and he flexed his legs beneath him so that he could rise and fire in
one single motion.
"Why did you hunt me?" the Cytha asked. "You are a stranger on my
world and you had no right to hunt me. Not that I mind, of course. In
fact, I found it stimulating. We must do it again. When I am ready to
be hunted, I shall come and tell you and we can spend a day or two at
it."
"Sure we can," said Duncan, rising. And as he rose into his crouch, he
held the trigger down and the gun danced in insane fury, the muzzle
flare a flicking tongue of hatred and the hail of death hissing
spitefully in the underbrush.
"Anytime you want to," yelled Duncan gleefully, "I'll come and hunt
you! You just say the word and I'll be on your tail. I might even kill
you. How do you like it, chump!"
And he held the trigger tight and kept his crouch so the slugs would
not fly high, but would cut their swath just above the ground, and he
moved the muzzle back and forth a lot so that he covered extra ground
to compensate for any miscalculations he might have made.
* * * * *
The magazine ran out and the gun clicked empty and the vicious chatter
stopped. Powder smoke drifted softly in the campfire light and the
smell of it was perfume in the nostrils and in the underbrush many
little feet were running, as if a thousand frightened mice were
scurrying from catastrophe.
Duncan unhooked the extra magazine from where it hung upon his belt
and replaced the empty one. Then he snatched a burning length of wood
from the fire and waved it frantically until it burst into a blaze and
became a torch. Rifle grasped in one hand and the torch in the other,
he plunged into the underbrush. Little chittering things fled to
escape him.
He did not find the Cytha. He found chewed-up bushes and soil churned
by flying metal, and he found five lumps of flesh and fur, and these
he brought back to the fire.
Now the fear that had been stalking him, keeping just beyond his
reach, walked out from the shadows and hunkered by the campfire with
him.
He placed the rifle within easy reach and arranged the five bloody
chunks on the ground close to the fire and he tried with trembling
fingers to restore them to the shape they'd been before the bullets
struck them. And that was a good one, he thought with grim irony,
because they had no shape. They had been part of the Cytha and you
killed a Cytha inch by inch, not with a single shot. You knocked a
pound of meat off it the first time, and the next time you shot off
another pound or two, and if you got enough shots at it, you finally
carved it down to size and maybe you could kill it then, although he
wasn't sure.
He was afraid. He admitted that he was and he squatted there and
watched his fingers shake and he kept his jaws clamped tight to stop
the chatter of his teeth.
The fear had been getting closer all the time; he knew it had moved in
by a step or two when Sipar cut its throat, and why in the name of God
had the damn fool done it? It made no sense at all. He had wondered
about Sipar's loyalties, and the very loyalties that he had dismissed
as a sheer impossibility had been the answer, after all. In the end,
for some obscure reason--obscure to humans, that is--Sipar's loyalty
had been to the Cytha.
But then what was the use of searching for any reason in it? Nothing
that had happened made any sense. It made no sense that a beast one
was pursuing should up and talk to one--although it did fit in with
the theory of the crisis-beast he had fashioned in his mind.
* * * * *
Progressive adaptation, he told himself. Carry adaptation far enough
and you'd reach communication. But might not the Cytha's power of
adaptation be running down? Had the Cytha gone about as far as it
could force itself to go? Maybe so, he thought. It might be worth a
gamble. Sipar's suicide, for all its casualness, bore the overtones of
last-notch desperation. And the Cytha's speaking to Duncan, its
attempt to parley with him, contained a note of weakness.
The arrow had failed and the rockslide had failed and so had Sipar's
death. What next would the Cytha try? Had it anything to try?
Tomorrow he'd find out. Tomorrow he'd go on. He couldn't turn back
now.
He was too deeply involved. He'd always wonder, if he turned back now,
whether another hour or two might not have seen the end of it. There
were too many questions, too much mystery--there was now far more at
stake than ten rows of _vua_.
Another day might make some sense of it, might banish the dread walker
that trod upon his heels, might bring some peace of mind.
As it stood right at the moment, none of it made sense.
But even as he thought it, suddenly one of the bits of bloody flesh
and mangled fur made sense.
Beneath the punching and prodding of his fingers, it had assumed a
shape.
Breathlessly, Duncan bent above it, not believing, not even wanting to
believe, hoping frantically that it should prove completely wrong.
But there was nothing wrong with it. The shape was there and could not
be denied. It had somehow fitted back into its natural shape and it
was a baby screamer--well, maybe not a baby, but at least a tiny
screamer.
Duncan sat back on his heels and sweated. He wiped his bloody hands
upon the ground. He wondered what other shapes he'd find if he put
back into proper place the other hunks of limpness that lay beside the
fire.
He tried and failed. They were too smashed and torn.
He picked them up and tossed them in the fire. He took up his rifle
and walked around the fire, sat down with his back against a tree,
cradling the gun across his knees.
* * * * *
Those little scurrying feet, he wondered--like the scampering of a
thousand busy mice. He had heard them twice, that first night in the
thicket by the waterhole and again tonight.
And what could the Cytha be? Certainly not the simple, uncomplicated,
marauding animal he had thought to start with.
A hive-beast? A host animal? A thing masquerading in many different
forms?
Shotwell, trained in such deductions, might make a fairly accurate
guess, but Shotwell was not here. He was at the farm, fretting, more
than likely, over Duncan's failure to return.
Finally the first light of morning began to filter through the forest
and it was not the glaring, clean white light of the open plain and
bush, but a softened, diluted, fuzzy green light to match the
smothering vegetation.
The night noises died away and the noises of the day took up--the
sawings of unseen insects, the screechings of hidden birds and
something far away began to make a noise that sounded like an empty
barrel falling slowly down a stairway.
What little coolness the night had brought dissipated swiftly and the
heat clamped down, a breathless, relentless heat that quivered in the
air.
Circling, Duncan picked up the Cytha trail not more than a hundred
yards from camp.
The beast had been traveling fast. The pug marks were deeply sunk and
widely spaced. Duncan followed as rapidly as he dared. It was a
temptation to follow at a run, to match the Cytha's speed, for the
trail was plain and fresh and it fairly beckoned.
And that was wrong, Duncan told himself. It was too fresh, too
plain--almost as if the animal had gone to endless trouble so that the
human could not miss the trail.
He stopped his trailing and crouched beside a tree and studied the
tracks ahead. His hands were too tense upon the gun, his body keyed
too high and fine. He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths. He
had to calm himself. He had to loosen up.
He studied the tracks ahead--four bunched pug marks, then a long leap
interval, then four more bunched tracks, and between the sets of marks
the forest floor was innocent and smooth.
Too smooth, perhaps. Especially the third one from him. Too smooth and
somehow artificial, as if someone had patted it with gentle hands to
make it unsuspicious.
Duncan sucked his breath in slowly.
Trap?
Or was his imagination playing tricks on him?
And if it were a trap, he would have fallen into it if he had kept on
following as he had started out.
Now there was something else, a strange uneasiness, and he stirred
uncomfortably, casting frantically for some clue to what it was.
* * * * *
He rose and stepped out from the tree, with the gun at ready. What a
perfect place to set a trap, he thought. One would be looking at the
pug marks, never at the space between them, for the space between
would be neutral ground, safe to stride out upon.
Oh, clever Cytha, he said to himself. Oh, clever, clever Cytha!
And now he knew what the other trouble was--the great uneasiness. It
was the sense of being watched.
Somewhere up ahead, the Cytha was crouched, watching and
waiting--anxious or exultant, maybe even with laughter rumbling in its
throat.
He walked slowly forward until he reached the third set of tracks and
he saw that he had been right. The little area ahead was smoother than
it should be.
"Cytha!" he called.
His voice was far louder than he had meant it to be and he stood
astonished and a bit abashed.
Then he realized why it was so loud.
It was the only sound there was!
The forest suddenly had fallen silent. The insects and birds were
quiet and the thing in the distance had quit falling down the stairs.
Even the leaves were silent. There was no rustle in them and they hung
limp upon their stems.
There was a feeling of doom and the green light had changed to a
copper light and everything was still.
And the light was _copper_!
Duncan spun around in panic. There was no place for him to hide.
Before he could take another step, the _skun_ came and the winds
rushed out of nowhere. The air was clogged with flying leaves and
debris. Trees snapped and popped and tumbled in the air.
The wind hurled Duncan to his knees, and as he fought to regain his
feet, he remembered, in a blinding flash of total recall, how it had
looked from atop the escarpment--the boiling fury of the winds and the
mad swirling of the coppery mist and how the trees had whipped in
whirlpool fashion.
He came half erect and stumbled, clawing at the ground in an attempt
to get up again, while inside his brain an insistent, clicking voice
cried out for him to run, and somewhere another voice said to lie flat
upon the ground, to dig in as best he could.
Something struck him from behind and he went down, pinned flat, with
his rifle wedged beneath him. He cracked his head upon the ground and
the world whirled sickeningly and plastered his face with a handful of
mud and tattered leaves.
He tried to crawl and couldn't, for something had grabbed him by the
ankle and was hanging on.
* * * * *
With a frantic hand, he clawed the mess out of his eyes, spat it from
his mouth.
Across the spinning ground, something black and angular tumbled
rapidly. It was coming straight toward him and he saw it was the Cytha
and that in another second it would be on top of him.
He threw up an arm across his face, with the elbow crooked, to take
the impact of the wind-blown Cytha and to ward it off.
But it never reached him. Less than a yard away, the ground opened up
to take the Cytha and it was no longer there.
Suddenly the wind cut off and the leaves once more hung motionless and
the heat clamped down again and that was the end of it. The _skun_ had
come and struck and gone.
Minutes, Duncan wondered, or perhaps no more than seconds. But in
those seconds, the forest had been flattened and the trees lay in
shattered heaps.
He raised himself on an elbow and looked to see what was the matter
with his foot and he saw that a fallen tree had trapped his foot
beneath it.
He tugged a few times experimentally. It was no use. Two close-set
limbs, branching almost at right angles from the hole, had been driven
deep into the ground and his foot, he saw, had been caught at the
ankle in the fork of the buried branches.
The foot didn't hurt--not yet. It didn't seem to be there at all. He
tried wiggling his toes and felt none.
He wiped the sweat off his face with a shirt sleeve and fought to
force down the panic that was rising in him. Getting panicky was the
worst thing a man could do in a spot like this. The thing to do was to
take stock of the situation, figure out the best approach, then go
ahead and try it.
The tree looked heavy, but perhaps he could handle it if he had to,
although there was the danger that if he shifted it, the bole might
settle more solidly and crush his foot beneath it. At the moment, the
two heavy branches, thrust into the ground on either side of his
ankle, were holding most of the tree's weight off his foot.
The best thing to do, he decided, was to dig the ground away beneath
his foot until he could pull it out.
He twisted around and started digging with the fingers of one hand.
Beneath the thin covering of humus, he struck a solid surface and his
fingers slid along it.
With mounting alarm, he explored the ground, scratching at the humus.
There was nothing but rock--some long-buried boulder, the top of which
lay just beneath the ground.
His foot was trapped beneath a heavy tree and a massive boulder, held
securely in place by forked branches that had forced their splintering
way down along the boulder's sides.
* * * * *
He lay back, propped on an elbow. It was evident that he could do
nothing about the buried boulder. If he was going to do anything, his
problem was the tree.
To move the tree, he would need a lever and he had a good, stout lever
in his rifle. It would be a shame, he thought a little wryly, to use a
gun for such a purpose, but he had no choice.
He worked for an hour and it was no good. Even with the rifle as a
pry, he could not budge the tree.
He lay back, defeated, breathing hard, wringing wet with perspiration.
He grimaced at the sky.
All right, Cytha, he thought, you won out in the end. But it took a
_skun_ to do it. With all your tricks, you couldn't do the job
until....
Then he remembered.
He sat up hurriedly.
"Cytha!" he called.
The Cytha had fallen into a hole that had opened in the ground. The
hole was less than an arm's length away from him, with a little debris
around its edges still trickling into it.
Duncan stretched out his body, lying flat upon the ground, and looked
into the hole. There, at the bottom of it, was the Cytha.
It was the first time he'd gotten a good look at the Cytha and it was
a crazily put-together thing. It seemed to have nothing functional
about it and it looked more like a heap of something, just thrown on
the ground, than it did an animal.
The hole, he saw, was more than an ordinary hole. It was a pit and
very cleverly constructed. The mouth was about four feet in diameter
and it widened to roughly twice that at the bottom. It was, in
general, bottle-shaped, with an incurving shoulder at the top so that
anything that fell in could not climb out. Anything falling into that
pit was in to stay.
This, Duncan knew, was what had lain beneath that too-smooth interval
between the two sets of Cytha tracks. The Cytha had worked all night
to dig it, then had carried away the dirt dug out of the pit and had
built a flimsy camouflage cover over it. Then it had gone back and
made the trail that was so loud and clear, so easy to make out and
follow. And having done all that, having labored hard and stealthily,
the Cytha had settled down to watch, to make sure the following human
had fallen in the pit.
* * * * *
"Hi, pal," said Duncan. "How are you making out?"
The Cytha did not answer.
"Classy pit," said Duncan. "Do you always den up in luxury like this?"
[Illustration]
But the Cytha didn't answer.
[Illustration]
Something queer was happening to the Cytha. It was coming all apart.
Duncan watched with fascinated horror as the Cytha broke down into a
thousand lumps of motion that scurried in the pit and tried to
scramble up its sides, only to fall back in tiny showers of sand.
Amid the scurrying lumps, one thing remained intact, a fragile object
that resembled nothing quite so much as the stripped skeleton of a
Thanksgiving turkey. But it was a most extraordinary Thanksgiving
skeleton, for it throbbed with pulsing life and glowed with a steady
violet light.
Chitterings and squeakings came out of the pit and the soft patter of
tiny running feet, and as Duncan's eyes became accustomed to the
darkness of the pit, he began to make out the forms of some of the
scurrying shapes. There were tiny screamers and some donovans and
sawmill birds and a bevy of kill-devils and something else as well.
Duncan raised a hand and pressed it against his eyes, then took it
quickly away. The little faces still were there, looking up as if
beseeching him, with the white shine of their teeth and the white
rolling of their eyes.
He felt horror wrenching at his stomach and the sour, bitter taste of
revulsion welled into his throat, but he fought it down, harking back
to that day at the farm before they had started on the hunt.
"I can track down anything but screamers, stilt-birds, longhorns and
donovans," Sipar had told him solemnly. "These are my taboos."
And Sipar was also their taboo, for he had not feared the donovan.
Sipar had been, however, somewhat fearful of the screamers in the dead
of night because, the native had told him reasonably, screamers were
forgetful.
Forgetful of what!
Forgetful of the Cytha-mother? Forgetful of the motley brood in which
they had spent their childhood?
For that was the only answer to what was running in the pit and the
whole, unsuspected answer to the enigma against which men like
Shotwell had frustratedly banged their heads for years.
* * * * *
Strange, he told himself. All right, it might be strange, but if it
worked, what difference did it make? So the planet's denizens were
sexless because there was no need of sex--what was wrong with that? It
might, in fact, Duncan admitted to himself, head off a lot of trouble.
No family spats, no triangle trouble, no fighting over mates. While it
might be unexciting, it did seem downright peaceful.
And since there was no sex, the Cytha species was the planetary
mother--but more than just a mother. The Cytha, more than likely, was
mother-father, incubator, nursery, teacher and perhaps many other
things besides, all rolled into one.
In many ways, he thought, it might make a lot of sense. Here natural
selection would be ruled out and ecology could be controlled in
considerable degree and mutation might even be a matter of deliberate
choice rather than random happenstance.
And it would make for a potential planetary unity such as no other
world had ever known. Everything here was kin to everything else. Here
was a planet where Man, or any other alien, must learn to tread most
softly. For it was not inconceivable that, in a crisis or a clash of
interests, one might find himself faced suddenly with a unified and
cooperating planet, with every form of life making common cause
against the interloper.
The little scurrying things had given up; they'd gone back to their
places, clustered around the pulsing violet of the Thanksgiving
skeleton, each one fitting into place until the Cytha had taken shape
again. As if, Duncan told himself, blood and nerve and muscle had come
back from a brief vacation to form the beast anew.
"Mister," asked the Cytha, "what do we do now?"
"You should know," Duncan told it. "You were the one who dug the pit."
"I split myself," the Cytha said. "A part of me dug the pit and the
other part that stayed on the surface got me out when the job was
done."
"Convenient," grunted Duncan.
And it _was_ convenient. That was what had happened to the Cytha when
he had shot at it--it had split into all its component parts and had
got away. And that night beside the waterhole, it had spied on him,
again in the form of all its separate parts, from the safety of the
thicket.
"You are caught and so am I," the Cytha said. "Both of us will die
here. It seems a fitting end to our association. Do you not agree with
me?"
"I'll get you out," said Duncan wearily. "I have no quarrel with
children."
* * * * *
He dragged the rifle toward him and unhooked the sling from the stock.
Carefully he lowered the gun by the sling, still attached to the
barrel, down into the pit.
The Cytha reared up and grasped it with its forepaws.
"Easy now," Duncan cautioned. "You're heavy. I don't know if I can
hold you."
But he needn't have worried. The little ones were detaching themselves
and scrambling up the rifle and the sling. They reached his extended
arms and ran up them with scrabbling claws. Little sneering screamers
and the comic stilt-birds and the mouse-size kill-devils that snarled
at him as they climbed. And the little grinning natives--not babies,
scarcely children, but small editions of full-grown humanoids. And the
weird donovans scampering happily.
They came climbing up his arms and across his shoulders and milled
about on the ground beside him, waiting for the others.
And finally the Cytha, not skinned down to the bare bones of its
Thanksgiving-turkey-size, but far smaller than it had been, climbed
awkwardly up the rifle and the sling to safety.
Duncan hauled the rifle up and twisted himself into a sitting
position.
The Cytha, he saw, was reassembling.
He watched in fascination as the restless miniatures of the planet's
life swarmed and seethed like a hive of bees, each one clicking into
place to form the entire beast.
And now the Cytha was complete. Yet small--still small--no more than
lion-size.
"But it is such a little one," Zikkara had argued with him that
morning at the farm. "It is such a young one."
Just a young brood, no more than suckling infants--if suckling was the
word, or even some kind of wild approximation. And through the months
and years, the Cytha would grow, with the growing of its diverse
children, until it became a monstrous thing.
It stood there looking at Duncan and the tree.
"Now," said Duncan, "if you'll push on the tree, I think that between
the two of us--"
"It is too bad," the Cytha said, and wheeled itself about.
He watched it go loping off.
"Hey!" he yelled.
But it didn't stop.
He grabbed up the rifle and had it halfway to his shoulder before he
remembered how absolutely futile it was to shoot at the Cytha.
He let the rifle down.
"The dirty, ungrateful, double-crossing--"
He stopped himself. There was no profit in rage. When you were in a
jam, you did the best you could. You figured out the problem and you
picked the course that seemed best and you didn't panic at the odds.
He laid the rifle in his lap and started to hook up the sling and it
was not till then that he saw the barrel was packed with sand and
dirt.
He sat numbly for a moment, thinking back to how close he had been to
firing at the Cytha, and if that barrel was packed hard enough or deep
enough, he might have had an exploding weapon in his hands.
He had used the rifle as a crowbar, which was no way to use a gun.
That was one way, he told himself, that was guaranteed to ruin it.
* * * * *
Duncan hunted around and found a twig and dug at the clogged muzzle,
but the dirt was jammed too firmly in it and he made little progress.
He dropped the twig and was hunting for another stronger one when he
caught the motion in a nearby clump of brush.
He watched closely for a moment and there was nothing, so he resumed
the hunt for a stronger twig. He found one and started poking at the
muzzle and there was another flash of motion.
He twisted around. Not more than twenty feet away, a screamer sat
easily on its haunches. Its tongue was lolling out and it had what
looked like a grin upon its face.
And there was another, just at the edge of the clump of brush where he
had caught the motion first.
There were others as well, he knew. He could hear them sliding through
the tangle of fallen trees, could sense the soft padding of their
feet.
The executioners, he thought.
The Cytha certainly had not wasted any time.
He raised the rifle and rapped the barrel smartly on the fallen tree,
trying to dislodge the obstruction in the bore. But it didn't budge;
the barrel still was packed with sand.
But no matter--he'd have to fire anyhow and take whatever chance there
was.
He shoved the control to automatic, and tilted up the muzzle.
There were six of them now, sitting in a ragged row, grinning at him,
not in any hurry. They were sure of him and there was no hurry. He'd
still be there when they decided to move in.
And there were others--on all sides of him.
Once it started, he wouldn't have a chance.
"It'll be expensive, gents," he told them.
And he was astonished at how calm, how coldly objective he could be,
now that the chips were down. But that was the way it was, he
realized.
He'd thought, a while ago, how a man might suddenly find himself face
to face with an aroused and cooperating planet. Maybe this was it in
miniature.
The Cytha had obviously passed the word along: _Man back there needs
killing. Go and get him._
Just like that, for a Cytha would be the power here. A life force, the
giver of life, the decider of life, the repository of all animal life
on the entire planet.
There was more than one of them, of course. Probably they had home
districts, spheres of influence and responsibility mapped out. And
each one would be a power supreme in its own district.
Momism, he thought with a sour grin. Momism at its absolute peak.
Nevertheless, he told himself, it wasn't too bad a system if you
wanted to consider it objectively.
But he was in a poor position to be objective about that or anything
else.
* * * * *
The screamers were inching closer, hitching themselves forward slowly
on their bottoms.
"I'm going to set up a deadline for you critters," Duncan called out.
"Just two feet farther, up to that rock, and I let you have it."
He'd get all six of them, of course, but the shots would be the signal
for the general rush by all those other animals slinking in the brush.
If he were free, if he were on his feet, possibly he could beat them
off. But pinned as he was, he didn't have a chance. It would be all
over less than a minute after he opened fire. He might, he figured,
last as long as that.
The six inched closer and he raised the rifle.
But they stopped and moved no farther. Their ears lifted just a
little, as if they might be listening, and the grins dropped from
their faces. They squirmed uneasily and assumed a look of guilt and,
like shadows, they were gone, melting away so swiftly that he scarcely
saw them go.
Duncan sat quietly, listening, but he could hear no sound.
Reprieve, he thought. But for how long? Something had scared them off,
but in a while they might be back. He had to get out of here and he
had to make it fast.
If he could find a longer lever, he could move the tree. There was a
branch slanting up from the topside of the fallen tree. It was almost
four inches at the butt and it carried its diameter well.
He slid the knife from his belt and looked at it. Too small, too thin,
he thought, to chisel through a four-inch branch, but it was all he
had. When a man was desperate enough, though, when his very life
depended on it, he would do anything.
He hitched himself along, sliding toward the point where the branch
protruded from the tree. His pinned leg protested with stabs of pain
as his body wrenched it around. He gritted his teeth and pushed
himself closer. Pain slashed through his leg again and he was still
long inches from the branch.
He tried once more, then gave up. He lay panting on the ground.
There was just one thing left.
He'd have to try to hack out a notch in the trunk just above his leg.
No, that would be next to impossible, for he'd be cutting into the
whorled and twisted grain at the base of the supporting fork.
Either that or cut off his foot, and that was even more impossible. A
man would faint before he got the job done.
It was useless, he knew. He could do neither one. There was nothing he
could do.
* * * * *
For the first time, he admitted to himself: He would stay here and
die. Shotwell, back at the farm, in a day or two might set out hunting
for him. But Shotwell would never find him. And anyhow, by nightfall,
if not sooner, the screamers would be back.
He laughed gruffly in his throat--laughing at himself.
The Cytha had won the hunt hands down. It had used a human weakness to
win and then had used that same human weakness to achieve a viciously
poetic vengeance.
After all, what could one expect? One could not equate human ethics
with the ethics of the Cytha. Might not human ethics, in certain
cases, seem as weird and illogical, as infamous and ungrateful, to an
alien?
He hunted for a twig and began working again to clean the rifle bore.
A crashing behind him twisted him around and he saw the Cytha. Behind
the Cytha stalked a donovan.
He tossed away the twig and raised the gun.
"No," said the Cytha sharply.
The donovan tramped purposefully forward and Duncan felt the prickling
of the skin along his back. It was a frightful thing. Nothing could
stand before a donovan. The screamers had turned tail and run when
they had heard it a couple of miles or more away.
The donovan was named for the first known human to be killed by one.
That first was only one of many. The roll of donovan-victims ran long,
and no wonder, Duncan thought. It was the closest he had ever been to
one of the beasts and he felt a coldness creeping over him. It was
like an elephant and a tiger and a grizzly bear wrapped in the
selfsame hide. It was the most vicious fighting machine that ever had
been spawned.
He lowered the rifle. There would be no point in shooting. In two
quick strides, the beast could be upon him.
The donovan almost stepped on him and he flinched away. Then the great
head lowered and gave the fallen tree a butt and the tree bounced for
a yard or two. The donovan kept on walking. Its powerfully muscled
stern moved into the brush and out of sight.
"Now we are even," said the Cytha. "I had to get some help."
Duncan grunted. He flexed the leg that had been trapped and he could
not feel the foot. Using his rifle as a cane, he pulled himself erect.
He tried putting weight on the injured foot and it screamed with pain.
He braced himself with the rifle and rotated so that he faced the
Cytha.
"Thanks, pal," he said. "I didn't think you'd do it."
"You will not hunt me now?"
Duncan shook his head. "I'm in no shape for hunting. I am heading
home."
"It was the _vua_, wasn't it? That was why you hunted me?"
"The _vua_ is my livelihood," said Duncan. "I cannot let you eat it."
The Cytha stood silently and Duncan watched it for a moment. Then he
wheeled. Using the rifle for a crutch, he started hobbling away.
The Cytha hurried to catch up with him.
"Let us make a bargain, mister. I will not eat the _vua_ and you will
not hunt me. Is that fair enough?"
"That is fine with me," said Duncan. "Let us shake on it."
He put down a hand and the Cytha lifted up a paw. They shook,
somewhat awkwardly, but very solemnly.
"Now," the Cytha said, "I will see you home. The screamers would have
you before you got out of the woods."